Magic: The Gathering Arena - Catch All

Pages

Wizards of the Coast - the stewards of this indie game called Magic: The Gathering - have finally decided to release a modern, online-only iteration of their collectible card combat game to complete with the likes of Hearthstone and... Gwent? But yeah... mainly Hearthstone. Think of it as a hybrid of Duels of the Planeswalkers and Magic Online with an eye towards accessibility and being spectator-friendly.

Spiel by Jeffrey Steefel, VP of WoTC digital game development

Some vids:

You can sign up for the Closed Beta now on the official Magic: The Gathering Arena website.

I have actually started to play some matches this since they did their first beta account wipe. Your beta account now will come with ten dual-colour starter decks and a smattering of booster packs across all of the current Standard format sets. I had found a bit of a content/features road map but lost it for the moment. I seem to remember they plan supporting Commander in Arena which is pretty nuts.

For now you can check out the M:TG Arena FAQ.

I am shaking off my horrid M:TG rust as well as grappling with the almost-but-not-quite-Duels-like UI being used in Arena. So I am getting crushed a lot but the game is very stable, albeit feature-lite, the matchmaking very speedy and the fun factor extremely high.

Sign me up. I never played much Magic and have always wanted to get into it, but bounced off of three different versions of Planeswalker.

Yeah! I've been playing all through out Easter weekend and I like refinements it has made to the Planeswalker template. The UI and controls still need getting used to but the big difference is how it gives you more flexibility + implementing hard stops at every phase of a turn or when resolving card effects on the stack... or not, depending on how you customize things. So in a way it's much less streamlined than what DotP does but definitely more robust.

Be warned though that it's very beta so no tutorials or bot matches to get your feet wet with the new decks, cards or interface. It's straight into the deep end of Ranked matches. The upside? Nothing matters because accounts will get wiped again and having somewhat seasoned players to match up with (I feel like the community at this point is pretty self-selected in terms of familiarity with M:TG) is nice practice.

I've haven't played Magic since high school 20 years ago and I don't typically like card game payment models, but I am cautiously interested in this. Anyone know how viable the F2P or small-money methods will be?

Kotaku has a pretty nice rundown on the M:TG Arena economy, however, the actual pricing and hard currency exchange is anyone's guess right now.

There is hope that WoTC and the Arena developer are doing their due diligence and come up with a model that's competitive with other online TCGs while also being mindful of recent perception shifts around loot boxes and lootbox-like mechanics.

WotC is the Arena developer. They’re doing this in-house. That’s probably part of why Hasbro brought in an executive from Microsoft to run the place. Or this is his handiwork. I haven’t paid enough attention to the timing to tell for sure.

Is there really so much Magic talk that we need two separate threads?

Anyway, I’m really enjoying Arena. I’m of the opinion that the economic model is sound and just needs to be tuned properly. But I enjoy deck building constraints and evolving decks over time as my collection grows; they definitely need to address the audience who just wants to buy into Standard and throw down with the best. That will probably come once they let you start spending money.

Played a couple matches over the weekend and it was nice to check out the new cards. Lot of new mechanics i need to look up after not playing for quite awhile.

Got an e-mail last week pushing me to play over the weekend and help stress their servers but I was (and am) aaaall up in Eternal at the moment. I do really want to try out & tune the green/black exploring pirates starter deck. My very first Arena match was against one of these and I loved the card draw and flavour. Speaking of Eternal, I really hope Arena brings it home with some nice solo content to get people started with earning cards and getting comfortable with the mechanics.

@Vargen: yeah in the past I've spun up threads for Duels of the Planeswalkers and for sure I feel the general going-ons between digital and paper Magic are enough to warrant the separation. In hindsight maybe an evergreen thread for ALL DoTP would've worked better because each of those installments peter out pretty quickly. I expect Arena to have quite a bit more traction especially after the official release.

Also thanks for clarifying the developer thing: Yes, this is a new internal studio spun up by WoTC to specifically push M:TG into the digital games space. Think I even had it in a OP link, heh.

Chasing a "Win 2 games with a X/Y colors deck" quest isn't worth it if you don't have a decent deck in those colors. Arena is a lot more fun when I remember that and cycle those away rather than trying to grind them out for an extra 75 gold...

Hey, it's been a while since we talked Arena. I have thoughts.

Koz wrote:

I've haven't played Magic since high school 20 years ago and I don't typically like card game payment models, but I am cautiously interested in this. Anyone know how viable the F2P or small-money methods will be?

They let you start spending money a few weeks ago. I haven't spent any. I've been playing a few games per day, mostly to get the first-daily-win reward and to keep from losing daily quests to a full log. I haven't been optimizing for quest rewards; I've been cycling away quests that I can't do with my favorite couple decks. I have missed several packs worth of weekly rewards because I haven't been playing close enough attention. I also had a bug that made the game unplayable for several days. Yay betas that are actually betas.

This approach has let me buy into a Quick Draft or two every weekend (drafts are only up on weekends at this stage of the beta). As of right now I have enough Gold banked for two drafts, and about 2.5 drafts worth of Gems. Quick Draft events give rewards in Gems, the buy-this-with-dollars currency, for some unknown reason. I have been a lot more successful with my drafting than I would have expected. I don't think it would be that difficult to consistently earn half a draft's worth of prizes every time you enter.

The smallest batch of Gems you can buy is 750 of them for $5. That's exactly the amount needed to enter a Quick Draft event. Cards you draft get added to your collection and they give you 50 Gems and an 8-card pack even if you win zero matches. If you win about as often as you lose then you'll average about half a draft's worth of Gems. That puts it at $10 for 3 drafts in the Gem economy. That's not too bad if you're comparing it to other ways to play Magic. I'll leave the comparisons to other video games to others.

If you're not interested in drafting and just want to build a deck and play it, then the game continues to be pretty generous in that regard. The starter decks are decent and fun to play against each other, and the steady flow of new cards do a good job of letting your first deck grow with you as a player. Things get a little trickier if/when you decide to branch out into newer decks. The lead developer has said they know that's a problem and are working on solutions.

Vargen wrote:

Chasing a "Win 2 games with a X/Y colors deck" quest isn't worth it if you don't have a decent deck in those colors. Arena is a lot more fun when I remember that and cycle those away rather than trying to grind them out for an extra 75 gold...

Those quests are no longer in the game, FWIW.

Any league-type play yet?

You mean like the leagues on MTGO? That's all there is. There are no long events with a set round structure and no waiting for other matches in the round to finish.

Yeah leagues like old MTGO where you would build a deck from a limited pool you opened, play a set number of matches and then be able to open another booster to add to the deck. Repeat for 3 or 4 rounds and then get prizes based on your record.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Yeah leagues like old MTGO where you would build a deck from a limited pool you opened, play a set number of matches and then be able to open another booster to add to the deck. Repeat for 3 or 4 rounds and then get prizes based on your record.

There's no progressive sealed league like that. No sealed at all yet, though I expect that to change. They're running something similar in physical stores, and that might make the jump to Arena at some point.

You can get an approximation of that experience by playing constructed without spending money, and just updating your decks from time to time with the steady trickle of new cards. The MMR system does an OK job of keeping the matches fair.

They just sent 5 extra keys to everybody in the beta if anybody still wants in. They're pushing for a big stress test Friday with half cost drafts and some other time limited stuff.

Yup got some codes too if anyone wants in.

I would like to check it out if anyone can PM me one.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I would like to check it out if anyone can PM me one.

Sent

would love a code as well.

TheGameguru wrote:

would love a code as well.

sent

I'd take a code if there's still spares....

Thanks Dryden!

And... of course the servers are down.

Yeah - servers are melting down. But this is why one tests things.

I've got a couple codes left, incidentally. PM me if you want one.

4dSwissCheese wrote:

Yeah - servers are melting down. But this is why one tests things.

I mean they did send out an email with the subject, "Break The Arena Servers TODAY!", so mission accomplished

Guess just my bad luck to try to install it today then!

If anyone has a spare code I'm in on this.

thejustinbot wrote:

If anyone has a spare code I'm in on this.

PMed you one

Edit - also anyone recommend a site for sharing deck lists? This is the first time I've been able to afford to play standard, and I'm curious what everyone's playing. I'm having a lot of fun with a grixis energy deck currently.

The response to the MTG Arena stress test event has been amazing. So amazing, that the amount of players hitting the game overwhelmed our servers within a matter of minutes.

As a big thank you to our patient players throughout the event, every player will receive 5,000 gold and 3 Core Set 2019 packs by Wednesday, July 25.

The special events are gone for now, but we hope you continue to play and enjoy the game. Our servers are now mostly stable and scaled for a bunch more players, but there are a lot of you still in there. We may still see service issues over the next few days as you play.

Thank you again for pounding our services so thoroughly. This was a big milestone for the game and we sure learned a lot.

I got in 4 or 5 half priced drafts when the servers finally stabilized last night, stayed up way too late but it was fun.

Sadly best result was five wins and probably most fun I had was a blue mill deck with both the common and rare mill enchantments and millstone. Only won two games with the deck but everyone came down to either my opponent pushed through the winning damage or they would have been out of cards on their next turn.

It’s important to remember that this is an actual beta beta, not a marketing preview. They’re just about there with the card implementation, but they’re just now getting around to stuff like choosing your player avatar and having a new-player tutorial. The graphics, particle effects, and interface are changing regularly too.

I personally think they need to update the combat animations. They make it look like Magic is a game where creatures attack creatures, a la Hearthstone, instead of a game where creatures are actively intercepting attackers.

Pages